


Black Eyes

by Elvendork



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s03e06 St Petersburg, Friendship, Gen, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 06:37:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20335723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elvendork/pseuds/Elvendork
Summary: Martin is no stranger to bad dreams. He refuses to call them nightmares. He isn’t sure why. Later, he will decide that he was saving the word. Later, when he discovers what a real nightmare is.





	Black Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in 2014 and I have not edited it since. I don't know why I never ended up posting it then, to be honest. Possibly it hit a little close to home, because frankly I was projecting a little with Martin's anxiety and dreams, and I suspect I wrote it largely as a coping mechanism for myself. Anyway. I re-read it, didn't hate it, and figured I could share it now. The title is from the David Wirsig song of the same name, because it is about a nightmare and I am terrible with titles so I steal them from music.
> 
> Quick warning for character injury and death in a dream, but as it is only in the dream I didn't tag the story as such. Check the episode tag and you can probably put two and two together without me giving away the whole plot here. It's not overly graphic but it may be upsetting, so take care.

Martin is no stranger to bad dreams, although he would probably not go as far as to call them _nightmares_. They are vivid, unpleasant, and frequently disorientating… but they aren’t _that_ bad, are they?

The worst ones are often about the most mundane things, too. Lateness is a recurring theme; he is late to a flight, late to an exam, late to his father’s funeral; always, always too late. He wakes up suddenly on these occasions, bolt upright in bed and convinced the impending failure is real, heart hammering and with a sick feeling of shame totally out of proportion to the situation. He spends the rest of the day hurrying to catch up, sure that he is hours behind in his schedule even when reality is just the opposite.

Sometimes he relives his failed exams and opens his eyes with tears on his cheeks, certain that he will never become a pilot, that all of his time and exhausting effort will have been wasted. It is best that he has these on layover nights, holed up in some grotty hotel with damp walls and dirty windows but the rest of MJN close by, memories of the recent flight still fresh in his mind. At least then he can convince himself fairly quickly that the dream wasn’t real. When he wakes up in the student house, on his own and surrounded by all the same things as surrounded him then – his flight manuals and model planes, his meticulous notes and his scattered few photographs – it is much harder to believe. It can take days to shake the feeling that _this_ is the dream, days to convince himself that he really _is_ a pilot now, he has been for years.

Slightly less often – in fact, increasingly rarely since joining MJN, although certain flights, when Douglas’s teasing has been too much or a passenger has been particularly rude, seem to trigger them quite effectively – he dreams a distorted version of his own school memories. He dreams of his briefcase being stolen by Nathan Smiley, except this time Nathan is much bigger than he really was, and most of the school is watching. He dreams of wandering the playground alone, calling for someone – anyone – to help him, to see him, to notice he exists. He dreams of sneering teachers and larger-than-life bullies, and sometimes they wear his friends’ faces and it is difficult to look them in the eye for a long time afterwards.

Even he finds his reaction to the dreams where he loses his hat quite ridiculous. It would be laughable if not for the very real sense of panic that they instil; somehow, whether in the dreams or in reality, losing his hat is tied inextricably to losing his license, to never being able to fly again. He _has_ to fly; it is in his very soul. The idea of losing it is unthinkable, and the dreams where he searches fruitlessly, endlessly, _alone_, for his missing cap are among the most frightening of all.

These are just a handful of the more specific examples of Martin’s less desirable dreams. (He refuses to call them nightmares. He isn’t sure why. Later, he will decide that he was saving the word. Later, when he discovers what a real nightmare is.) He has his fair share of others, too; of running away, breathless and terrified, from an unknown, unseen danger; of drowning in an endless expanse of infinitely deep water; of phone calls about his mother’s heart.

He can deal with them. He has had them in some form or another for his entire life. It comes from his constant anxious over-thinking while awake, from the tension and the unrelenting terror of making a mistake. He convinces himself so completely that something – anything – everything will go wrong that whether it really does or not while he is awake, he will eventually dream some version of it while asleep. And of course, the dreams only feed into his conscious paranoia; nourish it; strengthen it – and then he falls asleep and the cycle begins again.

Still. He is used to it. He can handle it. He has techniques, and if the techniques fail, then he is at least partially desensitised due to long exposure.

That is until he finally has a dream bad enough that he feels fully justified in using the term nightmare to describe it. It is the very worst sort; based on a true memory, but massively altered to make it more traumatic than it ever was in reality. There is enough believable detail that it seems terrifyingly real even once he has fully regained consciousness, but it is worse than anything he has ever truly experienced in his life. The only saving grace, then, is that he still hasn’t, really. He only sees it, hears it repeatedly in his sleep; the sharp sickening panic, the lurching horrible guilt – and oh, guilt does not _begin _to cover it – the fear, the pain, and oh so terribly real aching _grief_.

The dreams do not start straight way. It takes around a week for them to set in, and then he is having them every few days at least. He even starts to deliberately keep himself awake before non-flying days in a desperate effort to avoid them. He does not speak about them; he never speaks about his dreams. He knows that they are not real. He knows that it is nothing sort of ridiculous that a grown man should be so frightened of _dreams_. He does not think anyone notices anything unusual, if only because his being jumpy and nervous is hardly out of the ordinary anyway.

Douglas might raise an eyebrow at his sudden hyper-vigilance – even for him – when it comes to safety procedures, but he doesn’t mention it. Martin does not waste time feeling awkward over it. He has quite enough to feel awkward about already, and this – he will not apologise for this. Not when he knows _why_.

00000

‘_Christ_!’

That’s it, that’s the start, every time. Sometimes Martin even _knows_ he’s dreaming, but he still can’t pull himself out of it. He closes his eyes and there it is, as sudden and terrifying as it was the first time, the _real_ time.

‘Engine, fire number two engine.’

No, _no_, he knows what’s coming, he can feel it –

‘Oh God, err, engine fire check list number two engine.’

He’s gone, it’s real, this is happening, and there is no way out. _There is no way out_.

_Oh God oh God oh God_.

What are the procedures? What does he _do_? He wants to scream, to cry, to run away; he wants to hand this off to someone else, to hide from it, because his brain has frozen and his scalp is crawling with liquid panic. Ropes of barbed wire are coiling in his gut and his blood has turned to water.

‘Engine fire check list number two engine Captain.’

There, though – there, _Captain_, there is a lifeline, there is something he can hold on to – to Douglas’s calm, controlled voice and his own rank, which has acted as his anchor so many times before. He can do this.

They run through the checklist with almost textbook efficiency, and Martin feels himself beginning to calm down.

‘Martin, do you want me to land it?’

‘No, I’ll do it.’

He knows straight away that he shouldn’t have said that. He should never have said that. GERTI is shaking with the effort to remain airborne – or is that just his hands? His fingers slip on the controls, he is _trying_, he is trying everything he knows and the worst part is that he is doing it _perfectly_; he is doing everything exactly as he should and he _knows_ it, and it _still isn’t working_.

GERTI is falling; her engine is on fire, she is _falling_ and it is up to Martin to save them and he thinks he might be sick and _oh God please no_ –

Martin can see Douglas’s expression out of the corner of his eye and it is pale and stiff and his teeth are gritted and his eyes are wide and _no_ –

If Douglas is afraid then – _oh please _– what chance do they have?

They are falling, tilting – too fast, they are moving _too fast_ – if he doesn’t get her under control –

Carolyn and Arthur are on board –

_They are falling out of the sky_.

Martin’s ears hurt and awful terror is coursing through him, his heart is racing and these are the longest few seconds of his life –

It’s a blur, a rush of noise and movement, of grinding, crunching metal and heat and ice cold fear and when did the ground get so close?

Someone is screaming, or is that his imagination?

The loudest sound he has ever heard in his life – and then _pain_ – and blackness.

The next thing Martin knows, he is trying to open his eyes but there is something hot and sticky gumming the left one closed. His head is pounding. Slowly – very slowly – he becomes aware of the pain in the rest of his body, and of the tears mingled with the drying blood on his face.

There are flashing lights coming from somewhere. Everything is blurred, though; he cannot make out any distinct shapes.

It takes a long time, or what feels like one, to figure out where he is and what has happened. When he does, he lurches back into full consciousness with such thundering jolt and he is suddenly searching desperately, wide-eyed, not caring for the pain the movement causes, to see what has happened to Douglas.

He retches, heaving up everything that remains in his stomach because –

_Oh, God, no._

Words cannot do justice to his horror, the flood of which is almost strong enough to make him pass out again. He fights to stay awake because only awake can he dispute the evidence of his eyes.

Douglas is twisted in his seat, spread-eagled across the now lopsided control panel. His bloody face is turned towards Martin. His eyes are open. He is not breathing.

‘No –’ Martin croaks, the single word heavy with fathomless desperate disbelief. ‘No – Douglas – _no_.’ He tries to move and finds himself trapped in his seat, though he isn’t sure what is holding him there. ‘Douglas – no, please – _Douglas_ – Carolyn!’ His voice cracks and he barely manages to raise it. There is no reply. ‘Douglas – Carolyn – wake up, please – Arthur? Arthur! No… _please_… I didn’t – it wasn’t – _no_…’

00000

Douglas only notices because he is struggling to sleep himself. Not for any particularly ominous reason; he is simply restless tonight. Carolyn has booked them a twin room again, so he is sleeping only a few feet away from Martin in one direction and the bathroom in the other.

It is gone midnight and he is just on his way back to bed after getting himself a glass of water when he realises something is wrong. Martin is not thrashing around or crying out. He is barely making any sound at all, but years of sharing rundown hotel rooms with the Captain have attuned Douglas somewhat to Martin’s usual sleeping habits. He knows when something doesn’t fit.

Martin’s movements are stilted, jerky; his head twitches from side to side and his right hand, curled across his chest, clenches and unclenches convulsively. The sheets are tangled around his legs, barely covering half of his torso. He is making little muted sounds of distress; muffled whimpers and fragmented words that could be names, could be – _his_ name? There are tear tracks on his cheeks.

‘Martin?’ Douglas whispers, setting his glass down on the side table and approaching Martin’s bed cautiously.

‘No –’ Martin murmurs, followed by a sound that could be a word or could be a muffled sob.

‘Martin, wake up,’ Douglas repeats, a little louder. He briefly considers returning to his bed and leaving Martin alone, not least because Martin will surely be humiliated to wake up and find out Douglas has witnessed this. He quickly decides against it, especially after noting the fresh tears that leak from the corners of Martin’s eyes as he falls quiet again. It is almost as if he has… given up, somehow.

‘It’s not real,’ Douglas soothes, slowly lowering himself to sit on the edge of Martin’s bed and reaching out a hand to shake the Captain’s shoulder. ‘You’re okay. Whatever it is, it’s not real.’

‘Sorry… I’m sorry…’

‘_Martin_,’ Douglas repeats insistently. He keeps his voice low and level, hoping that its constancy will be some sort of reassurance. ‘Wake up. It’s okay. You’re safe. You haven’t done anything.’

A fresh, half-suppressed sob shakes Martin’s entire body.

‘Martin!’ Douglas’s voice is sharp now, and Martin jerks awake with a gasp and a wild, terrified look in his eyes.

‘What –? I – what?’

‘Hello, Captain.’

‘Douglas?’

‘Guilty,’ Douglas replies easily, sure for a moment that this will be enough to reassure Martin, to bring him back from whatever nightmare he was suffering to reality. He is entirely unprepared for Martin to choke on his biggest sob yet and make a sudden, aborted movement as though he was about throw his arms around Douglas and thought better of it. He settles for pushing himself up into a sitting position. Douglas obligingly shuffles backwards to give him space, but remains deliberately within reaching distance just as a precaution.

‘I’m – sorry,’ Martin apologises in what was evidently meant to be a formal, dismissive tone, but which comes out broken and shaking.

‘None of that,’ Douglas chides.

‘Did I,’ Martin pauses and takes a deep, shuddering breath. ‘Did I wake you?’

‘No, I was already awake,’ Douglas nods towards his glass of water. ‘You seemed distressed.’ He is watching Martin keenly, unwillingly to entirely admit to how deep his concern runs. It is unexpectedly painful to see Martin so upset. It strikes a deep, protective chord in his chest that until recently he had thought was reserved only for his daughters. (The only other time he has ever felt it this strongly was when he saw Arthur’s reaction to the mere idea of his father’s presence.)

‘It’s nothing,’ Martin insists, scraping a hand impatiently across his damp cheeks and then hugging his knees to his chest. Douglas notices, though, that while Martin is carefully avoiding looking him directly in the eye, he is still apparently unable to tear his gaze from the First Officer’s face.

‘It clearly isn’t,’ Douglas presses. Martin bites his lip but does not reply. ‘I’m not going to tease you, you know.’

‘Right,’ Martin scoffs, rolling his eyes. His breathing is still shaky, but gradually returning to normal the longer he spends looking at Douglas, at – oh. Douglas firmly blames the late hour for the fact that it took him so long to realise that Martin is, consciously or otherwise, obviously trying very hard to time his breathing to match Douglas’s. The First Officer immediately levels out his breaths, makes them deep and soothing but not so much that it will be obvious that he has noticed. The difference in Martin’s posture is almost instantaneous.

‘I’m not going to tease you,’ Douglas promises. ‘I swear. You’re obviously upset about whatever happened, and I’m not so much of an idiot that I can’t see this is not a new experience for you. Are you going to tell me what happened, or do I have to guess?’

‘Nothing happened,’ Martin says quickly. He sounds as though he is trying to convince himself more than Douglas. ‘It wasn’t real, so nothing happened, so it doesn’t matter.’

Douglas studies Martin in silence for several long seconds. His cheeks are still tear-stained; the track marks glint dimly in the faint streetlight that filters through the threadbare curtains. His thinning curls are tousled and his bare chest is shivering with the after-effects of the dream. His hands are each clutched tightly around the opposite wrist, his arms wrapped around his knees. His pyjama trousers trail several inches below his heels. He still looks terrified. He looks… in shock.

He looks like he did after their landing is St Petersburg, only about a thousand times worse.

_Oh_.

‘Oh, Martin,’ Douglas breathes, softer even than he intended it to be. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘It’s stupid,’ Martin admits in a small voice. He finally, finally takes his eyes off Douglas – only to bury his face in the gap between his knees and chest and curl even more tightly into himself.

‘No,’ says Douglas firmly, ‘it’s not.’

‘It’s fine,’ Martin mumbles. ‘I get them a lot. Just not… usually this bad. I’m fine.’

‘You neither look nor sound “fine”,’ Douglas argues. ‘What do you mean you get them a lot? I’ve never noticed before, and we’ve shared a room dozens of times.’

‘Like I said, they’re not usually this bad,’ Martin shrugs. ‘It’s normally just… stuff from school, or – or you know, the ones where you’re running away from something but you don’t know what it is, they’re not – they’re not _nightmares_ –’

‘They sound like nightmares to me,’ Douglas interrupts.

‘Well they’re not,’ Martin snaps, lifting his head enough to glare at Douglas over his knees. It would almost look menacing… on anyone except Martin.

‘What would you call them then?’

‘They’re just… bad dreams. I can handle it. I’m used to it.’

‘Martin, if your dreams are bad enough that you wake up crying in the middle of the night –’

‘You’re the one who woke me up.’

‘Because you were crying and shaking and I was worried about you,’ Douglas says bluntly.

‘You were – what?’

‘I was worried,’ Douglas repeats. ‘Is that so hard to believe?’

‘A little,’ Martin admits, although a tiny smile flickers across his face as he does. It is enough that Douglas feels the admission was worth it even if this is all it manages to achieve.

‘Just tell me,’ Douglas insists gently, ‘I might be able to help.’

Martin tucks his toes in under his feet and crosses his legs at the ankle. He seems to be trying to fold into himself, vanish from view entirely; Douglas isn’t sure whether moving away would help or not, and settles for leaning back ever so slightly in an effort to seem at least a little less imposing. Martin is biting his lip again. He looks as though he is seriously considering something that he is almost certain would be a bad idea. Douglas waits patiently for him to reach his conclusion.

‘It was… St Petersburg,’ Martin whispers at last. His eyes well up with tears again at the words; it is difficult to see in the poor light, but Douglas can hear it in his voice.

‘I thought so,’ says Douglas.

‘You – it was – exactly how it happened, how it started, except then – but it was so _real_. It was so vivid. I can _smell_ –’

‘You’re not there, Martin,’ Douglas cuts in, deliberately using Martin’s name to keep him grounded, anchored in the present. ‘You’re okay.’

‘We crashed,’ Martin whispers. ‘I – _I_ crashed, I should have let you take the landing, you’re the better pilot –’

‘I could not have landed her better myself,’ Douglas says, still in the same low, steady voice. ‘We _did not_ crash. We’re fine. It’s okay.’ He is not trying to stop Martin talking, or belittle the fear that is still so very evident in his tone and posture. He is simply trying to reassure him; to punctuate the recollection with the guarantee that none of it was real, that they are all okay, that Martin really did save all their lives.

‘I woke up afterwards,’ Martin’s voice is so quiet and so thick with tears now that Douglas can barely hear it. ‘I woke up, and – everything hurt, and there was smoke, and then I saw – I saw –’

‘You saw me,’ Douglas finishes for him when it becomes clear he will not be able to do so for himself. ‘Everything around you was broken and twisted, and nothing was in focus. You couldn’t move and you didn’t know why. There were lights, or sirens, or shouting voices or something – but no one seemed to be getting any nearer. And you saw me, and I was dead.’

Martin looks as though he has been punched in the chest. All of his breath leaves him in a rush and he gapes open mouthed at Douglas, blinking in disbelief.

‘How did you –?’

‘It wasn’t hard to figure out,’ says Douglas, feeling the beginnings of his own creeping shame rising inside him. Shame and guilt he had thought long repressed and forgotten; felt for events that had never even transpired in the first place and for his terrible reaction to the very idea that they might have done. He knows, for once, _exactly_ how Martin is feeling right now.

‘Then why did you _ask_?’

‘Because I thought it would do you good to tell someone. It did for me.’ The admission sticks in his throat and feels unnatural on his lips, but he remembers too well how it feels to have these dreams not to try and help in any way he can.

‘_You_ –?’

‘Believe it or not, you’re not the first pilot in history to survive a tricky landing.’

‘But… you? I mean – I don’t mean the landing, I mean – _you_ had… dreams?’

‘Every night for a week,’ says Douglas. ‘It was a long time ago. And it wasn’t nearly as neat an actual landing as yours was.’

‘It’s been a month,’ Martin replies, looking shamefaced.

‘Three days ago,’ says Douglas with a sigh.

‘What?’

‘Three days ago. That was the last time I had the dream. I don’t very often now – as I said, it was a very long time ago. Sometimes old memories can be dragged up by current events though, and as you seem to have noticed we had a very nearly rather harrowing experience a few weeks ago. I only said I had had the dream every night for a week, I never said it stopped completely after that.’

‘What… what did you do?’ Martin asks, plucking nervously at the shabby fabric of his trousers. He does not seem to notice what he is doing.

‘I talked to my wife about it. I didn’t want to, but I could hardly keep it from her – I was much louder than you were and I kept waking her up.’

‘And did that… help?’

‘A little,’ Douglas gives a small shrug. ‘It takes time to get over these things. You have to acknowledge what happened but still move past it. Add as many successful flights to the list as you can. The bad ones will always stick out, but you’ll come to a sort of balance. Find a way of reassuring yourself that it wasn’t real.’

‘You were dead,’ Martin whispers. Douglas reaches out before he can think better of it and takes Martin’s hand, which he squeezes tightly.

‘It _wasn’t real_,’ he says. ‘I promise you Martin, it _was not real_.’

‘I know,’ Martin says, squeezing back gratefully. In the broad light of day they will both almost certainly deny that this ever happened, but there is something inherently private and safe about conversations at two in the morning which defies normal logic. There is a sort of unspoken rule that what is said in the night stays in the night, and it is safe to make confessions that no one would dream of by dawn. ‘I know, but I still… I keep _seeing_ it. I can’t stop seeing it.’

‘You will,’ Douglas promises. ‘In time, you will.’


End file.
